September 18th, 1:17 p.m.

We got the travel call!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I cannot believe it!! Although, I guess I should believe it – I’ve been moaning about it for weeks.

Actually, the call ended up being an email. The agency called our home number, but I wasn’t home. I was in class this morning. I’m glad she didn’t give up and she sent me an email saying “please call me.” I am still in a daze. It is amazing. Things always happen when you least expect it….

My mind momentarily thought “I wonder if we’d be able to make it on a flight tomorrow?” but then sanity returned as I remembered everything I have to accomplish before leaving. So we have a temporary hold on flights that we’ll head to the airport for next Thursday night. We are waiting to hear from our U.S. agency as to whether or not this schedule is acceptable for the agency in Korea. They will let us know in the morning. Once they let us know, we can finalize the flights.

And now the running around begins — I have to figure out how to get ahead in my lesson plans, rearrange the schedule for all my classes, and figure out what I’m packing. We don’t have the crib or changing table yet, so we have a call in to the store to pick up the ‘loaner’ crib they promised us a while back. Hopefully we can pick it up this weekend. Of course we’re still decorating the nursery, so we will try to finish that this weekend as well, and then head to BRU to pick up anything that we still need (which isn’t much, after the shower!) We still haven’t finished getting gifts for the foster family, social worker, and the agency personnel, so guess what else we’ll be doing this weekend…

We haven’t received an update yet on Jaden’s height and weight, so I have no idea what to pack for him yet. I’m hoping to get that information before we travel, or I’m just going to have to take a guess at what to bring.

Next week is going to be an interesting week trying to teach and keep up with the house and work when I am sure my focus will be solely only on boarding that plane!

As it turns out, I have a colleague at work who is currently teaching in Seoul. We were in touch this week and he has offered to show us around Seoul. So I’m sure we’ll have some wonderful pictures to post once we do get there. By the way; his description of Seoul was that it is “a crazy place with a lot of people in it.” Sounds familiar!

News!!!

Finally, after a couple of weeks that seemed like forever, we have news!! Today I opened yesterday’s mail (I have to get better about that) and we had a letter from the National Visa Center. The letter was dated August 26th and said that our case was forwarded to the U.S. Embassy in Seoul, South Korea.

If I have my timelines down, this means we could be getting a call as soon as Tuesday – and most likely by the second week of September. If the call comes Tuesday I’m not sure we’ll be able to catch a plane by next weekend… It depends on flight schedules…. and human schedules… but we will sure try!!  

Of course, as we expected, this is timed perfectly with the baby shower that so many of you are joining us for next Saturday. Assuming we get the travel call on Tuesday, and assuming we are able to get flights out and hotels reserved next week (that’s a lot of assumptions), then we will try to fly out on Saturday evening so we can go ahead with the shower as planned. I’m really looking forward to seeing you all at the shower, so we’ll definitely do our best to work around it!

We are super, crazy excited!!! We’ll be running around this weekend trying to prepare as much as we can for Jaden’s arrival… it is highly likely that we won’t have the crib in time, but the company that we ordered it from (USA Baby) was kind enough to offer us a loaner crib until ours comes in. We’ll call them this weekend to see about picking it up sometime next week so that we can at least have the nursery set up. 

The rest of our weekend we will spend baby-proofing the house (lots and lots of window shade cords to take care of), and I’ll be preparing as many of my lectures that I can in advance so that I don’t have to worry about that while we are on our trip. We’re also hoping to go to the state fair in our town tomorrow. I have never been to a state fair before. It’s hard for me to believe there really is such a thing; I’ve only seen them in the movies so I keep wondering if we’ll get there and hear “SOOooiee!” I’ll keep all yooz New Yawka’s posted. LOL

Hopefully I’ll have more to report on Tuesday  — Have a wonderful Labor Day weekend!